Decency is simple, not showy—
just being a good human.
I pick up my pen, tracing ripples of dignity,
kindness lessons from grandpa, grandma, and nana
who whispered
we’re all God’s children.
Ash taps from sacred smoke,
drifts over bulrushes. I tried to believe her
even as I wondered whose child I was,
adrift in family names fluttering
like cattails—
Put down that phrase.
Everyone matters
Just for being alive. That truth steadies me
like slow tides
pressing my bare feet into soft marsh
mud holding fast, I do not drift.
Back to Baltimore’s cracked sidewalks,
heat-warped asphalt mingled with Nan’s smoke.
My young mother waited tables
under peeling neon
She met him—and his parents— on Mother’s Day.
Patient, steady in her section
as spartina blades bending to bay breeze.
I was ten when he married my mom.
Summers pulled us shoreward,
past Holly Neck,
where time pooled slowly.
Salt air breathed ancient stories into my lungs,
Secrets riding calm pluvial wind.
Backroads lined with centennial pines
old-growth witnesses— oaks of poetry.
Summers where tidal rivers murmured
susurrus hums like a lullaby—
The land rocking us
It had been waiting
to raise us too.
Dusk was magic.
Grandpa tossed a soap bar
through twilight
So, I could wash before supper.
Grandma scattered breadcrumbs for ducks,
their slow dance, teasing soft laughter,
finishing sentences—
unfinished.
That laughter.
I crave that now.
Once I desired becoming—
Now I want to grow in ordinary moments
where the day’s pulse pulses
and washes me into myself.
playing cards with friends, coins clinking,
laughter under lantern glow—
Shadow swept broom moments
marrow-deep, tying me to ancestors
whose fingerprints rest on every
rusted nail of the shore house’s
wide-screen porch.
barefoot through woods,
jumping from piers floating beneath
a burning sun
watching heron stalk the shallows,
Ospreys wheel; frogs croak in the dark.
Crackling fire—then the pier broke beneath me.
wood splintering, cold snow-cap water
closing over my head.
A water moccasin slid past.
I thrashed, screamed for him—
steady as spartina, he held me,
carried me back.
holding him, carrying me
Later, bleeding under the summer moon,
I met Daryl
unruly hair, easy dignity.
Unlike his naval kin yet perfectly placed.
I danced westward, years folding into
family years gathered repeatedly by the shore house—
fireworks, late-night howls, warmth by flame.
I called to catch up. He called back.
I didn’t know it would be the last time.
Days later, he was gone.
But some nights when water shifts its tide with the moon,
I still hear him—calling me in.
A great author said: write
as if everyone you know is dead.
I thought—too easy, I know a lot of dead.
But writing a ghost without judgment
is hard. I write like he’s still here
in the tide’s slow pull back and forth
forth and back a sigh, fire tide laps
crackle salt smoke riding the bay wind,
follows laughter, the tide retreats
by habit, like a jaw that no longer bites right.
My thoughts wander the marshland
to the slow hum of Baltimore streets
Checkerspot wings are black and orange
lifting over meadows—
Only the young trust the air will hold them.